The whole point of winning, among other things, is that you get to dictate terms. The loser generally has the terms dictated to them. Nobody seems to have bothered to tell Democratic Tennessee state Rep. Aftyn Behn that.
Then again, people don’t seem to have told Aftyn Behn a lot of things. (Like, for instance, the fact that most voters don’t defend either defunding the police or burning down police stations, two things that Behn supported before she tried to win a seat that wasn’t a Democrat sinecure.)
On Tuesday, Behn showed that she doesn’t understand the simple rules of power dynamics by telling her supporters, after she lost, that she used her concession call with victorious GOP candidate Matt Van Epps to lecture him about Obamacare.
For those of you who haven’t been following off-year politics, Behn and Van Epps were squaring off in a special election for the vacant U.S. House seat in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District. Polls had the race within the margin of error; while Van Epps didn’t win by the same margin that Trump did in 2024, few candidates whose party controls the White House and Congress do, and his nearly nine-point margin of victory was more than pundits had expected.
Part of this was due to the fact that Behn was an unreconstructed dumpster-fire of a lefty — or, to use her own too-accurate words, “a very radical person.” I won’t have too many other opportunities to use these clips in the future, I perfervidly hope, so here’s Behn in all her no-airquotes-emphatic-enough “glory.”
Good morning to all the people who ACTUALLY respect our law enforcement officers unlike Aftyn Behn who thinks it’s okay to burn down police stations. pic.twitter.com/Eel6vFwIxF
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) November 29, 2025
🚨BREAKING: Audio has just been uncovered where Democrat Congressional candidate Aftyn Behn (TN-07) says she OPPOSES prayer.
Aftyn Behn: “There are also prayer groups in the legislature…it is uncomfortable!”
TN-07 nominee Aftyn Behn just deleted this post from 2024. pic.twitter.com/lgvd7jz4cj
— AJ Huber (@Huberton) November 26, 2025
🚨 Democrat nominee for the upcoming TN07 special election Aftyn Behn condemns women who get married and start families– saying it’s the product of “deeply patriarchal structures”:
“My therapist always asks me to transcribe my dreams and the recurring dream I’ve had is standing… pic.twitter.com/LTsYj0im7Q
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) November 24, 2025
🚨MORE INSANTIY🚨 Resurfaced video from 2019 shows Democrat Tennessee candidate Aftyn Behn SCREAMING and SOBBING as officers had to forcibly drag her out of Gov. Lee’s office. @DailyCaller pic.twitter.com/rcUnwQeXlN
— Nicole Silverio (@NicoleMSilverio) November 24, 2025
Look, I’m not saying she doesn’t read the labels on her prescription bottles closely enough, but on the basis of past performance, I definitely wouldn’t avouch that she does, either.
Anyhow, as a political rubbernecker, I’d hoped that she would break down in her concession speech like she did in that last clip. It did not disappoint, but in the opposite direction: Behn actually seemed like she scored a victory, at least on a moral level.
She — or her speechwriters — seems to have realized that she didn’t actually prevail numerically: “We may not have won tonight, but we changed the story of what’s possible here,” Behn told supporters in Nashville.
And then she did what all losers have the capacity to do. She lectured Van Epps on keeping her tack on Obamacare subsidies:
Aftyn Behn: I called the congressman elect, Matt van Epps, and I had one question for him: What will define what happens next? Do not let the affordable care act subsidies expire. Do not raise healthcare costs for working families in Tennessee.
pic.twitter.com/6aBLcOfYD1— Lucas Sanders 💙🗳️🌊💪🌈🚺🟧 (@LucasSa56947288) December 3, 2025
“I called the congressman-elect, Matt Van Epps, and I had one question for him,” she said. “What will define what happens next? Do not let the Affordable Care Act subsidies expire. Do not raise health care costs for working families in Tennessee.”
I want to be clear on two reasons why this is so outré, aside from the obvious optics of being the loser and lecturing the winner about his priorities.
First, this wasn’t a new topic for Behn, who tried to reconcile her radical beliefs with the buzzword of “affordability” by doubling down on the necessity of funding Obamacare subsidies for the foreseeable future without any off-ramp from the disastrous care program:
Aftyn Behn: I’ll ensure those subsidies remain for the ACA. I’ll restore funding for Medicaid, which is a lifeline for so many rural hospitals in the district. I’ll roll back tariffs, which are bankrupting Tennessee farmers right now. I’m someone who cannot be bought by special… pic.twitter.com/FtBfe6JpZS
— FactPost (@factpostnews) December 2, 2025
Keep in mind, too, that these subsidies are the reason that the Democrats shut down the government for a whole month in October — and Behn would have given them an extra vote in that direction had she been elected.
Second, while it pales in comparison to Trump’s victory in the 7th Congressional District two years ago, let’s just be clear: Nine points is not a moral victory. It is not a mandate for change that doesn’t flip a seat.
Special and off-year elections are generally more favorable for the party that’s out of power, and 2025 has proved to be no exception. Now-Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia first got noticed by national Democrats for coming a great deal closer to winning a House seat in a deep red district in 2017 than Behn did, so what’s her excuse?
Aside from the daffy pull-quotes from her pre-politics life, there’s also the fact that Tennesseans probably realized life wasn’t going to get any more affordable by adding yet another pro-subsidy vote to the House, especially an intransigent progressive. And yet, to hear her tell it, she was in a position to read the riot act to Matt Van Epps during their concession call.
What version of reality does this woman inhabit? And while you’re imagining that, imagine too how much worse we would be if she were to have been elected, and horrid piece of fiction were to have impinged upon our national body politic. Tennessee didn’t just dodge a bullet on Tuesday. America did, as well.
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